French Law Explained: Codes, Courts and Key Rules (2026)

France runs on written codes rather than case law, and on one national body of law rather than fifty state versions. For a reader used to American or British law that inverts two habits at once. There is no French equivalent of asking which state's rule applies, and the starting point for almost any question is a numbered article in a code rather than a leading case.

Information last verified on 19 July 2026. This hub presents general legal information, not legal advice.

Jurisdiction scope: This hub covers the law of France. It does not cover Belgium, Switzerland, Quebec, Monaco or the other French-speaking jurisdictions, whose law differs even where the vocabulary is shared. For other countries see our world recording laws and world data privacy laws hubs. For the United States see our US legal topics hub, and for other common-law countries see our United Kingdom and Canada hubs.

French law starts with the codes

French law is codified. Rather than a body of judicial decisions from which a rule is drawn, the rule is written down in advance as a numbered article inside a code, and the court's job is to apply and interpret that article. Almost every question this site covers traces back to one of a small number of codes.

Citations follow a consistent pattern. A letter prefix tells you where the article comes from: L for provisions voted by Parliament, R and D for provisions made by decret. So Article L1237-11 of the Code du travail is legislation, while Article R1234-2, which sets the statutory severance formula, is regulatory. Knowing the letter tells you how easily the rule can change, because a decret can be amended without a new statute.

The consolidated text of every code sits on Legifrance, and the government's plain-language explanations for individuals sit on Service-Public.fr. Those two sites are the starting point for any French legal question, and they are the sources this site cites first.

Where the courts still decide the question

Codification does not make case law irrelevant. It changes its role. A French judgment does not bind later courts in the formal way a common-law precedent does, but a ruling from the top of the system can still change practice across the country overnight without a single word of the code being rewritten.

Three courts matter most. The Cour de cassation is the supreme court for civil and criminal matters, and its Assemblee pleniere sits for the most significant questions. The Conseil d'Etat is the supreme administrative court and rules on challenges to decrets. The Conseil constitutionnel rules on whether a provision is constitutional, including through the question prioritaire de constitutionnalite, a mechanism that lets a litigant challenge a statute already in force.

Both routes have produced significant changes recently. On 22 December 2023 the Assemblee pleniere of the Cour de cassation reversed a long-standing rule and allowed unfairly or secretly obtained evidence to be produced in civil proceedings, provided it is indispensable to the right to proof and the intrusion is strictly proportionate. On 12 June 2026 the Conseil constitutionnel struck down Article 65-2 of the 1881 press law, removing a mechanism that had allowed the short defamation limitation period to start again in certain circumstances.

There is no state-by-state axis

This is the structural difference that matters most for anyone arriving from the United States, Canada or Australia. France is a unitary state. Employment law, tenancy law, succession, road-traffic penalties and press law are set nationally, so there is no French equivalent of comparing one state's rule against another's.

Two narrow exceptions exist and neither changes the picture. Alsace-Moselle retains a handful of local rules of historical origin, and the overseas territories can operate adapted regimes. Beyond those, the questions that actually vary in France are not geographic. They are procedural, meaning which stage you have reached, and personal, meaning whether you are the employee or the employer, the tenant or the landlord.

Which court hears which dispute

Getting the right forum is often the first practical question, and the answer depends entirely on subject matter.

Avocat, notaire and commissaire de justice

France has no single profession that maps onto the American attorney, and using the wrong term sends people to the wrong office.

An avocat advises clients and represents them in court. A notaire is a public officer, not simply a lawyer in private practice: notaires authenticate deeds, settle successions, and handle gifts, marriage contracts and property transfers, and for some acts a notaire is legally required. A commissaire de justice, the profession created in 2022 by merging the huissier de justice and the commissaire-priseur judiciaire, enforces judgments, serves formal documents, and draws up the inventory of condition at the start and end of a tenancy.

French legal changes in 2025 and 2026

Several changes in the last two years are recent enough that older guidance still circulating online is now wrong.

Road safety. A single statute, the loi of 9 July 2025, reshaped the headline driving penalties. Driving at 0.8 g/L of blood alcohol or more has carried up to 3 years' imprisonment and a 9,000 euro fine since 11 July 2025, replacing the previous 2 years and 4,500 euros. The same reform created new offences of homicide routier and blessures routieres in the Code penal. Then, on 29 December 2025, an implementing decret extended delit status to a first offence of exceeding the speed limit by 50 km/h or more. That threshold was already a delit on a repeat offence; what changed is that a first offence is no longer a 5th-class contravention. The case is heard by the tribunal correctionnel, and confiscation of the vehicle is mandatory on a repeat offence unless the court declines to order it by a specially reasoned decision.

Defamation. On 12 June 2026 the Conseil constitutionnel declared Article 65-2 of the 1881 press law contrary to the Constitution. That article had allowed a fresh limitation period to run where a later final criminal decision cleared the person of the facts alleged against them. The abrogation took effect on publication and applies to every case not finally judged at that date, so the ordinary 3-month period now applies without that exception.

Evidence. The December 2023 reversal on secretly obtained evidence has since been applied by the chambre sociale of the Cour de cassation in employment cases, in both directions. Recordings have been admitted where no other proof was available and excluded where other evidence existed, which makes the test a real filter rather than a general permission.

Paid leave. A statute of 22 April 2024 brought French law into line with EU law by allowing paid leave to accrue during sick leave for a non-occupational illness, at 2 working days a month capped at 24 days, with retroactive effect for periods going back to December 2009.

Recording, surveillance and privacy in France

France protects private conversations through the criminal law. Article 226-1 of the Code penal makes it an offence to record or transmit words spoken privately without the consent of the speaker, punishable by up to 1 year and 45,000 euros, with consent presumed where the recording was made openly and the person was in a position to object but did not. A separate provision covers keeping or publishing such a recording, and prosecution requires the victim's complaint.

Surveillance is split between two regimes that are easy to confuse. Filming a public space is videoprotection and requires authorisation from the prefecture. Filming a private space is videosurveillance, which needs no prefectural authorisation. What governs it instead depends on who is filming. A business filming areas its staff use falls under data-protection law and so under the CNIL. A private individual filming their own home is generally outside data-protection law altogether, under the household exemption, and is limited instead by the criminal protection of private life in Article 226-1 of the Code penal and the right to privacy in Article 9 of the Code civil. Either way, a private individual may not film the public highway or a neighbour's property, a point the CNIL states directly.

• France recording laws
• France data privacy laws
• World recording laws by country

Defamation and reputation in France

Defamation in France is a press-law offence rather than an ordinary civil claim. The Loi du 29 juillet 1881 separates diffamation, which alleges a specific fact damaging to a person's honour or reputation, from injure, which is an insulting expression that alleges no fact at all. That distinction determines both the offence and the procedure.

The dominant practical feature is the deadline. An action must be brought within 3 months of first publication, and for online content the clock generally runs from the first posting rather than from each subsequent view. The procedure is also strictly formal: the complaint must identify the offending words precisely and state the provision relied on.

• France defamation laws
• World defamation laws by country

France and EU data protection

French data protection runs on two instruments at once. The GDPR applies directly across the European Union, and the Loi du 6 janvier 1978 supplies the national rules that sit alongside it. The CNIL is the French supervisory authority: it receives complaints, investigates, and can impose administrative fines, but it does not award compensation to individuals, which requires a civil court.

• EU data privacy laws and the GDPR
• What is the GDPR?
• GDPR data subject rights
• EU adequacy decisions
• EU-US Data Privacy Framework

Where to go next

Start from the topic, then check the code article the guide cites. Legifrance carries the consolidated text of every code and statute, and Service-Public.fr carries the government's own explanation of how a procedure works in practice. Where a figure is set by decret or revised each year, such as a fine, a tax allowance or a legal-aid threshold, confirm the current number on the official page before relying on it.

Disclaimer

This hub presents general legal information about the law of France, verified on 19 July 2026. It is not a consultation juridique and does not create a lawyer-client relationship. French law changes frequently by decret and by annual indexation, and how it applies depends on your specific circumstances. For advice on your situation, consult an avocat, a notaire or another qualified French legal professional, or contact a point-justice.